Foreclosure filings in Santa Clara County tumbled more than 30 percent last month compared with the same time last year, a strong sign the worst of the housing crisis has passed, according to a report released Tuesday.

April was the fifth consecutive month that default notices declined compared with their year-earlier levels, according to data from ForeclosureRadar, a Discovery Bay company. A total of 923 notices of default were filed in Santa Clara County in April, down 32 percent from April 2009, and down 15 percent from March 2010.

“I am optimistic at the moment that we’ve passed the peak” of the foreclosure crisis, said company founder Sean O’Toole.

Housing experts credit a variety of factors for the decline, including rising housing prices in some neighborhoods and improvements in lenders’ short sale and loan modification efforts.

Default filings also declined in San Mateo County, as well as statewide. In San Mateo County, 25 percent fewer notices of default were filed last month than during April 2009, for a total of 327 notices. That figure represented an 18 percent decline from March 2010.

Statewide, lenders filed 27,832 default notices last month, down 41 percent from April 2009 and down 16 percent from March 2010.

Notices of default are the first stage of the foreclosure process, and typically are sent by lenders to borrowers who are a few months behind in their mortgage payments.

The slowdown in new filings is a good sign for the California housing market, O’Toole said. “Like the employment figures, it’s not that they are getting dramatically better, but at least they’re no longer getting worse,” he said.

Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Bank, agreed that the biggest spikes in foreclosures have probably come and gone.

“We’ve seen a variety of reports about California housing in recent months, all pretty much saying the same thing, that the market is stronger and foreclosures are falling,” he said. “California is a great illustration of the price dynamic, in that if prices start rising, people think prices are going to continue to rise, and people are going to make every effort to hold onto an asset that is gaining in value.”

Many homes statewide continue to lose value as the economy struggles and unemployment remains high. But median home prices in some areas have risen compared with last year as demand from first-time buyers and real estate investors for low-priced housing surged, causing some properties to appreciate. In addition, high-end homes are selling in greater numbers than in 2009, which drives up median prices.

In Santa Clara County, for example, the median price of the single-family homes sold in March rose 29 percent, to $550,000, the biggest increase in nearly a decade, according to MDA DataQuick. The median price measures the halfway mark, meaning half the homes sold for less than the median figure, and half for more. And a report Monday from Zillow said housing prices in Santa Clara County had bottomed out, and had been slowly appreciating for the past 10 months.

Others argue that it’s not just borrowers choosing to keep paying their loans that’s got defaults on the decline.

“You can absolutely attribute some of the change to an increased focus on short sales,” said Dustin Hobbs, a spokesman for the California Mortgage Bankers Association.

In a short sale, owners whose home values have sunk seek approval from their lenders to sell their homes for less than what they owe on their mortgages. For the past few years, the process has been notoriously long and knotty, but recent measures announced by the Obama administration were designed to speed the process, allowing more homeowners in financial hardship to sell their homes and avoid foreclosure. (View details at www.making homeaffordable.gov.)

Despite the hopeful signs in the ForeclosureRadar report, nearly 4,800 homes in Santa Clara County and about 1,600 in San Mateo County remain in the pipeline for foreclosure, the company said. Owners of these homes have received at least a notice of default but have not received a notice that their property will be sold at auction.

Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, said the ForeclosureRadar report can’t sufficiently tell the story of the thousands of homeowners still at risk of foreclosure.

“The counseling agencies we work with report they are busier than ever,” he said, “so on the ground it doesn’t feel like things are improving.”

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